1) Start with the name of the group. Consider alternate names and spellings if you don't see relevant results.
Pashai (Afghanistan people)
Bira (African people)
Lahu (Asian people)
Kamu (Australian people)
Tipura (Indic people) and many, many more
If you don’t know the name of the peoples, but you know they are in a particular geographic area, try searching the term Ethnology and the geographic region and/or country.
2) Combine the group's name with the term "ethnography" or the phrase "social life and customs"
Europe, Central – Social life and customs
Paris (France) – Social life and customs
Montana – Social life and customs
3) Try an advanced search that includes the name or names of the group and an aspect of the culture that you want to research, such as burial or interment or funeral.
4) Another way to search is to start with the name of an anthropologist and then search by his or her name as an author in the catalog to determine if he or she has published an ethnography based on their fieldwork.
When a book has a call number that starts with GN, it means that it is primarily about some aspect of anthropology. You can use the chart below to identify call number ranges for various topics in anthropology.
One useful strategy is to find a book on your topic and look at the books near that one on the shelves.
Anthropology Call Number Ranges
GN 49-298..............Physical anthropology. Somatology
GN 51-59................Anthropometry
GN 62.8-265...........Human variation
GN 269-279............Race (General)
GN 280.7................Man as an animal. Simian traits versus human traits
GN 281-289.............Human evolution
GN 282-286.7..........Fossil man. Human paleontology
GN 296-296.5..........Medical anthropology
GN 301-674.............Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology
GN 357-367.............Culture and cultural processes
GN 378-396.............Collected ethnographies
GN 397-397.7..........Applied anthropology
GN 406-517.............Cultural traits, customs, and institutions
GN 406-442.............Technology. Material culture
GN 448-450.8...........Economic organization. Economic anthropology
GN 451-477.7...........Intellectual life
GN 478-491.7...........Social organization
GN 492-495.2...........Political organization. Political anthropology
GN 495.4-498...........Societal groups, ethnocentrism, diplomacy, warfare, etc.
GN 502-517..............Psychological anthropology
GN 537-674..............Ethnic groups and races
GN 550-674..............By region or country
GN 700-890..............Prehistoric archaeology
Argonauts of the Western Pacific by
Bronislaw Malinowski¿s pathbreaking Argonauts of the Western Pacific is at once a detailed account of exchange in the Melanesian islands and a manifesto of a modernist anthropology. Malinowski argued that the goal of which the ethnographer should never lose sight is ¿to grasp the native¿s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world.¿ Through vivid evocations of Kula life, including the building and launching of canoes, fishing expeditions and the role of myth and magic amongst the Kula people, Malinowski brilliantly describes an inter-island system of exchange - from gifts from father to son to swapping fish for yams - around which an entire community revolves. A classic of anthropology that did much to establish the primacy of painstaking fieldwork over the earlier anecdotal reports of travel writers, journalists and missionaries, it is a compelling insight into a world now largely lost from view. ¿ With a new foreword by Adam Kuper.
Border Visions by
The U.S.-Mexico border region is home to anthropologist Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez. Into these pages he pours nearly half a century of searching and finding answers to the Mexican experience in the southwestern United States. He describes and analyzes the process, as generation upon generation of Mexicans moved north and attempted to create an identity or sense of cultural space and place. In today's border fences he also sees barriers to how Mexicans understand themselves and how they are fundamentally understood. From prehistory to the present, Vélez-Ibáñez traces the intense bumping among Native Americans, Spaniards, and Mexicans, as Mesoamerican populations and ideas moved northward. He demonstrates how cultural glue is constantly replenished by strengthening family ties that reach across both sides of the border. The author describes ways in which Mexicans have resisted and accommodated the dominant culture by creating communities and by forming labor unions, voluntary associations, and cultural movements. He analyzes the distribution of sadness, or overrepresentation of Mexicans in poverty, crime, illness, and war, and shows how that sadness is balanced by creative expressions of literature and art, especially mural art, in the ongoing search for space and place. Here is a book for the nineties and beyond, a book that relates to NAFTA, to complex questions of immigration, and to the expanding population of Mexicans in the U.S.-Mexico border region and other parts of the country. An important new volume for social science, humanities, and Latin American scholars, Border Visions will also attract general readers for its robust narrative and autobiographical edge. For all readers, the book points to new ways of seeing borders, whether they are visible walls of brick and stone or less visible, infinitely more powerful barriers of the mind.
Coming of age in Samoa : a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation by 
Ethnic Identity in China by
This case study introduces students to the problems of ethnic diversity in China, a modern nation-state that is normally thought of and taught as culturally monolithic. By introducing students to the wide diversity of identity within one nationality, they are exposed to the ethnic complexities as well as to the larger issue of ethnic pluralism in modern nation-states. Students' perceptions regarding other societies, as well as our own, are challenged and broadened.
The Forest People by
The bestselling, classic text on one anthropologist's incredible experience living among the African Mbuti Pygmies, and what he learned from their culture, customs, and love of life. In this bestselling book, Colin Turnbull, a British cultural anthropologist, details the incredible Mbuti pygmy people and their love of the forest, and each other. Turnbull lived among the Mbuti people for three years as an observer, not a researcher, so he offers a charming and intimate firsthand account of the people and their culture, and especially the individuals and their personalities. The Forest People is a timeless work of academic and humanitarian significance, sure to delight readers as they take a trip into a foreign culture and learn to appreciate the joys of life through the eyes of the Mbuti people.
Freedom in Fulani Social Life by
Paul Riesman's Freedom in Fulani Social Life is based upon his two years of residence among the Jelgobe, a group of semi-nomadic Fulani of the Sahel in Upper Volta, western Africa. Since its original publication, this classic study has profoundly influenced the field of anthropology through its re-examination of the enthnographer's personal input on his research. "Freedom in Fulani Social Life richly documents how the ethnographer's own personal and cultural background is implicated in the research process. . . . For this reason, [Riesman's] book will be of paramount interest to all ethnographers."?Philip L. Kilbride, Reviews in Anthropology "A remarkably well-written and insightful account of Fulani life. . . . In addition to using the conventional approaches of participating in and observing the daily activities of the Jelgobe . . . Riesman enriches his account by examining his personal feelings about particular incidents."?Library Journal "An interesting and provocative study."?Choice At the time of his death in 1988, Paul Riesman was an anthropologist who taught at Carleton College.
The High Valley by
The author's personal record of almost two years of field work among the Gahuku tribes of the Australian Trust Territory of New Guinea.
Himalayan Herders by
This first general case study about the Sherpa people in the Yolmo region of Nepal helps to place the more familiar Sherpa of the Solu-Khumbu region of Mt. Everest in comparative context. This study provides an ethnographic description of a village within the broad context of human adaptation to mountain environments, Tibetan regional cultures, and culture change.
Hunting Caribou by
Denésuliné hunters range from deep in the Boreal Forest far into the tundra of northern Canada. Henry S. Sharp, a social anthropologist and ethnographer, spent several decades participating in fieldwork and observing hunts by this extended kin group. His daughter, Karyn Sharp, who is an archaeologist specializing in First Nations Studies and is Denésuliné, also observed countless hunts. Over the years the father and daughter realized that not only their personal backgrounds but also their disciplinary specializations significantly affected how each perceived and understood their experiences with the Denésuliné. In Hunting Caribou, Henry and Karyn Sharp attempt to understand and interpret their decades-long observations of Denésuliné hunts through the multiple disciplinary lenses of anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology. Although questions and methodologies differ between disciplines, the Sharps' ethnography, by connecting these components, provides unique insights into the ecology and motivations of hunting societies. Themes of gender, women's labor, insects, wolf and caribou behavior, scale, mobility and transportation, and land use are linked through the authors' personal voice and experiences. This participant ethnography makes an important contribution to multiple fields in academe while simultaneously revealing broad implications for research, public policy, and First Nations politics.
The Huron by
This remarkable reconstruction of the sedentary, agricultural, but warlike life of the Huron underscores the importance of studying Huron life, since the Huron were wiped out by other Iroquoians in the 17th Century.
The Mi'kmaq by
Chronicled here are 500 years of the complex dynamics of Mi'kmaq culture. This text explores the group as a tribal nation-their ordeals in the face of colonialism and their current struggle for self-determination and cultural revitalization.
My Freshman Year by
After more than fifteen years of teaching, Rebekah Nathan, a professor of anthropology at a large state university, realized that she no longer understood the behavior and attitudes of her students. Fewer and fewer participated in class discussion, tackled the assigned reading, or came to discuss problems during office hours. And she realized from conversations with her colleagues that they, too, were perplexed: Why were students today so different and so hard to teach? Were they, in fact, more likely to cheat, ruder, and less motivated? Did they care at all about their education, besides their grades? Nathan decided to put her wealth of experience in overseas ethnographic fieldwork to use closer to home and apply to her own university. Accepted on the strength of her high school transcript, she took a sabbatical and enrolled as a freshman for the academic year. She immersed herself in student life, moving into the dorms and taking on a full course load. She ate in the student cafeteria, joined student clubs, and played regular pick-up games of volleyball and tag football (sports at which the athletic fifty-something-year-old could hold her own). Nathan had resolved that, if asked, she would not lie about her identity; she found that her classmates, if they were curious about why she was attending college at her age, never questioned her about her personal life. Based on her interviews and conversations with fellow classmates, her interactions with professors and with other university employees and offices, and her careful day-to-day observations, My Freshman Year provides a compelling account of college life that should be read by students, parents, professors, university administrators, and anyone else concerned about the state of higher education in America today. Placing her own experiences and those of her classmates into a broader context drawn from national surveys of college life, Nathan finds that today's students face new challenges to which academic institutions have not adapted. At the end of her freshman year, she has an affection and respect for students as a whole that she had previously reserved only for certain individuals. Being a student, she discovers, is hard work. But she also identifies fundamental misperceptions, misunderstandings, and mistakes on both sides of the educational divide that negatively affect the college experience. By focusing on the actual experiences of students, My Freshman Year offers a refreshing alternative to the frequently divisive debates surrounding the political, economic, and cultural significance of higher education--as well as a novel perspective from which to look at the achievements and difficulties confronting America's colleges and universities in the twenty-first century.
Never in Anger by
In the summer of 1963, anthropologist Jean Briggs journeyed to the Canadian Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) to begin a seventeen-month field study of the Utku, a small group of Inuit First Nations people who live at the mouth of the Back River, northwest of Hudson Bay. Living with a family as their ?adopted? daughter?sharing their iglu during the winter and pitching her tent next to theirs in the summer?Briggs observed the emotional patterns of the Utku in the context of their daily life. In this perceptive and highly enjoyable volume the author presents a behavioral description of the Utku through a series of vignettes of individuals interacting with members of their family and with their neighbors. Finding herself at times the object of instruction, she describes the training of the child toward achievement of the proper adult personality and the handling of deviations from this desired behavior.
Portraits of the Whiteman by
'The Whiteman' is one of the most powerful and pervasive symbols in contemporary American Indian cultures. Portraits of 'the Whiteman': linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache investigates a complex form of joking in which Apaches stage carefully crafted imitations of Anglo-Americans and, by means of these characterizations, give audible voice and visible substance to their conceptions of this most pressing of social 'problems'. Keith Basso's essay, based on linguistic and ethnographic materials collected in Cibecue, a Western Apache community, provides interpretations of selected joking encounters to demonstrate how Apaches go about making sense of the behaviour of Anglo-Americans. This study draws on theory in symbolic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and the dramaturgical model of human communication developed by Erving Goffman. Although the assumptions and premises that shape these areas of inquiry are held by some to be quite disparate, this analysis shows them to be fully compatible and mutually complementary.
The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers by
This classic ethnography, now in its second edition, describes the traditional way of life of the Kaluli, a tropical forest people of Papua New Guinea. The book takes as its focus the nostalgic and violent Gisalo ceremony, one of the most remarkable performances in the anthropological literature. Tracking the major symbolic and emotional themes of the ceremony to their sources in everyday Kaluli life, Schieffelin shows how the central values and passions of Kaluli experience are governed by the basic forms of social reciprocity. However, Gisaro reveals that social reciprocity is not limited to the dynamics of transaction, obligation and alliance. It emerges, rather, as a mode of symbolic action and performative form, embodying a cultural scenario which shapes Kaluli emotional experience and moral sensibility and permeates their understanding of the human condition.
Tournaments of Value by
A significant addition to our understanding of the varied experience of Middle Eastern women, Tournaments of Value gives a careful description of a world of female socializing - the volume, velocity, energy, and elaborateness of this female social world is remarkable. This work represents a substantial and original contribution to our knowledge of women's social centrality in the Islamic Middle East. Most earlier studies have been written from the vantage point of men, confirming popular Western stereotypes of Muslim women's marginality to public life. Other works, concentrating on Islamic systems of 'honour' and 'shame,' have focused on women's ability to affect their families' status negatively. Meneley neatly supplies us with examples of the opposite - the deep reliance of men on their female kin to establish, maintain, and indeed increase the family's honour in the eyes of the wider community by engaging in the exchange of hospitality. Not only is visiting competitive, but social engagement with others is an essential part of moral personhood. Meneley's central thesis examines the associated construction of identity - their own, their men's, and their families' - by women, largely through the detailed style and comportment features of their complex social relations. This account of the refinement, cultivation, and sophistication of this feminine culture is extremely valuable. Moreover, Anne Meneley's data challenges scholarly assumptions about the cross-cultural validity of a division between household and community, between domestic and public domains. She demonstrates the fluidity of social life, the shifting, processual nature of community organization, and in doing so provides a welcome counterpoint to more rigid formulations of Middle Eastern social structure expressed in other ethnographies. These aspects join Meneley's work to a growing body of anthropological scholarship in which fine-grained observation, with attention to language, comportment, and gesture, combines with astute contextual analysis to produce a sensitive portrait of a community. Highly readable and accessible to a wide audience, Meneley incorporates vignettes to illustrate her more analytical points and to enliven the text, allowing the reader to enter fully into the rich world of Zabid. This work touches on many issues of current and enduring importance to both Middle Eastern ethnography and to women's studies.
Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging by
How are local understandings of identity, relatedness, and belonging transformed in a global era? How does international tourism affect possibilities for who one can become? In urban Portugal today, hundreds of individuals trace their ancestry to 15th century Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism, and many now seek to rejoin the Jewish people as a whole. For the most part, however, these self-titled Marranos ("hidden Jews") lack any direct experience of Jews or Judaism, and Portugal's tiny, tightly knit Jewish community offers no clear path of entry. According to Jewish law, to be recognized as a Jew one must be born to a Jewish mother or pursue religious conversion, an anathema to those who feel their ancestors' Judaism was cruelly stolen from them. After centuries of familial Catholicism, and having been refused inclusion locally, how will these self-declared ancestral Jews find belonging among "the Jewish family," writ large? How, that is, can people rejected as strangers face-to-face become members of a global imagined community - not only rhetorically, but experientially? Leite addresses this question through intimate portraits of the lives and experiences of a network of urban Marranos who sought contact with foreign Jewish tourists and outreach workers as a means of gaining educational and moral support in their quest. Exploring mutual imaginings and direct encounters between Marranos, Portuguese Jews, and foreign Jewish visitors, Unorthodox Kin deftly tracks how visions of self and kin evolve over time and across social spaces, ending in an unexpected path to belonging. In the process, the analysis weaves together a diverse set of current anthropological themes, from intersubjectivity to international tourism, class structures to the construction of identity, cultural logics of relatedness to transcultural communication. A compelling evocation of how ideas of ancestry shape the present, how feelings of kinship arise among far-flung strangers, and how some find mystical connection in a world said to be disenchanted, Unorthodox Kin will appeal to a wide audience interested in anthropology, sociology, Jewish studies, and religious studies. Its accessible, narrative-driven style makes it especially well suited for introductory and advanced courses in general cultural anthropology, ethnography, theories of identity and social categorization, and the study of globalization, kinship, tourism, and religion.
The Wintu and Their Neighbors by
On the cutting edge of world-systems theory comes The Wintu and Their Neighbors, the first case study to compare and contrast systematically an indigenous Native American society with the modern world at large. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines sociology, anthropology, political science, geography, and history, Christopher Chase-Dunn and Kelly M. Mann have scoured the archaeological record of the Wintu, an aboriginal people without agriculture, metallurgy, or class structure who lived in the wooded valleys and hills of northern California. By studying the household composition, kinship, and trade relations of the Wintu, they call into question some of the basic assumptions of prior sociological theory and analysis. Chase-Dunn and Mann argue that Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems perspective, originally applied only to the study of modern capitalistic societies, can also be applied to the study of the social, economic, and political relationships in small stateless societies. They contend that, despite the fact that the Wintu appear on the surface to have been a household-based society, this indigenous group was in fact involved in a myriad of networks of interaction, which resulted in intermarriage and which extended for many miles around the region. These networks, which were not based on the economic dominance of one society over another--a concept fundamental to Wallerstein's world-systems theory--led to the eventual expansion of the Wintu as a cultural group. Thus, despite the fact that the Wintu did not behave like a modern society--lacking wealth accumulation, class distinctions, and cultural dominance--Chase-Dunn and Mann insist that the Wintu were involved in a world-system and argue, therefore, that the concept of the "minisystem" should be discarded. They urge other scholars to employ this comparative world-systems perspective in their research on stateless societies.
Women and the Ancestors by
This classic study of Black Carib culture and its preservation through ancestral rituals organized by older women now includes a foreword by Constance R. Sutton and an afterword by the author. "One of the outstanding studies of this genre. . . . Refreshingly, the book has good photographs, as well as strong endnotes and bibliography, and very useful tables, figures, maps, and index." -- Choice "An outstanding contribution to the literature on female-centered bilateral kinship and residence." -- Grant D. Jones, American Ethnologist "A richly detailed account of a contemporary culture in which older women are important, valued, and self-respecting." -- Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly "A combination of competent research, interwoven themes, and an easily readable, sometimes beautifully evocative, prose style." -- Heather Strange, The Gerontologist
Righteous Dopefiend by
This powerful study immerses the reader in the world of homelessness and drug addiction in the contemporary United States. For over a decade Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg followed a social network of two dozen heroin injectors and crack smokers on the streets of San Francisco, accompanying them as they scrambled to generate income through burglary, panhandling, recycling, and day labor. Righteous Dopefiend interweaves stunning black-and-white photographs with vivid dialogue, detailed field notes, and critical theoretical analysis. Its gripping narrative develops a cast of characters around the themes of violence, race relations, sexuality, family trauma, embodied suffering, social inequality, and power relations. The result is a dispassionate chronicle of survival, loss, caring, and hope rooted in the addicts' determination to hang on for one more day and one more "fix" through a "moral economy of sharing" that precariously balances mutual solidarity and interpersonal betrayal.
Women of the Shadows by
With haunting photographs and piercing descriptions, Women of the Shadows depicts the secluded women of southern Italy and their passionate, painful, heartrending existence. Cornelisen, who lived among these women in the mountainous villages of Lucania after World War II, reveals their struggles during a time when most of their men had to leave for factories in the industrial north. The women remained behind to work the fields. There's Peppina, Ninetta, Teresa, Maria, Pinuccia, and Cettina, all women who "have done things of which they are not proud; they know it in their hearts, as one woman said, that nothing is private, they would also agree with her conclusion: That doesn't mean you get used to it." With an extraordinary understanding of the interior lives of these and other women, Cornelisen brings them out of the shadows to tell their heroic stories in a book which truly merits the label "classic." A new introduction by the author suggests that the more things change, the more, in essence, they remain the same.
